GQ - Street Stories — Luc-Yan Picker

The team over at GQ Japan was pretty stoked about our first collaboration together. The four films turned out better than they had originally expected and the reaction online was pretty positive. The best part of that is that we now had their trust to make the next series as we saw fit. We were able to finally convince them to drop the idea of a series about BMX riders and instead produce a series about different aspects of Japanese street culture. Their only prerequisite was: “Make it cool, and make us learn something.”

Now, street culture as a concept can be a bit hard to grasp and I wanted to define it for the team at GQ in broad terms to give myself more freedom to choose our subjects. They originally took it as culture happening on the streets. Basically, they understood it to mean hip hop. Instead I took the definition from Urban Dictionary:

“Street culture is the creative forces of the urban centers. It is modern, always changing, always adapting, always pushing the limits of any set idea whether that’s fashion, art, design, music or sports.“

I especially focused on the part about pushing limits since that what felt most applicable to our project. Japan is a country of set rules. There are established ways to do things and deviance from that is usually frowned upon. “The nail that sticks out get hammered down” is basically an accepted perspective for many. Personally, I find it obscene.

However, I feel there is a bright side to it. If being a little different makes you a weirdo, then nothing really stops you from getting weirder does it? I mean, if you’re already ostracized, you no longer need to make an effort to fit in. In some way, that’s got to be a little liberating.

So we aimed to make our series about these outsiders and misfits, the ones who stand out and just don’t care about it. We produced four films each about a different subject relating to culture: skateboarding, tattoos, art and DJs.

The project once again had a tiny production budget and that was our biggest challenge. This time, GQ wanted the films to be longer. Between 7 and 10 minutes long and that was also a new challenge for me as a filmmaker. I really wanted the videos to keep the attention of our viewers for their entire duration and I knew that meant we needed to keep them always surprising and fresh. To accomplish this, I thought we should interview at least a few people for each films and capture a good variety of additional footage for inserts.

We started with the research and casting. I wanted the cast to offer different perspective on every subject. I thought it could give us a better understanding, a more rounded view as well as highlight changes into the culture. This is where the power of Condé Nast really manifested itself. They were able to contact everyone on my list and convince them to take part in the project. They also provided interviewers who would also be writing articles to go along with the films. This was a huge relief for me as I really don’t count interviewing as one of my skills, especially in Japanese.

We put together essentially the same team as for the dance series but even smaller. This time, the only members of the crew that were not from Cutters Studios were Matt De Sousa as director of photography and a location sound engineer name Skirmantas, nicknamed Spider. When I first hear his name from Matt, I was immediately put off. What kind of a person goes around calling themselves Spider? Sounds like a guy with face tattoos who dies in the first 10 minutes of an 80s action movie. I was quickly proven wrong. Turns out he was the most professional one on set. Always early, never complaining and very meticulous in his work. My assumptions were dumb.

I made a list of questions for the interviewers and explained to them what I was aiming to get from each interviewee and we went ahead with the shoots. This time, the filming period was staggered to fit the schedule of the cast. We calculated a half day for each of them. This made shooting much easier on the crew and kept the mood very light all throughout.

Skateboarding

We shot this episode all in one day. The location was a shop called Qucon that had two skateparks attached to it. The two skateboarders were from the same crew called Evisen and were surprisingly difficult. I originally wanted to interview more of their members but most of them did not want to appear in our film. The two that agreed were the original founder and the youngest member. We spent a day with them skateboarding in their shop.

All in all it was a good shoot but I realized that just because someone is part of a culture doesn’t mean they have really thought about particularly deeply. I was afraid that we would lack a bit of depth in the final product. I was hoping for a more thoughtful insight from the cast that would be more thought-provoking but instead it all stayed rather superficial. Our footage was also pretty limited in variety but were able to use footage from the skating brand H-Street, some old footage they took themselves as well as some stock footage.

DJs

Our second episode was about DJs. In following with the theme, we wanted the film to offer a different perspective to the audience about what DJing was all about. I wanted to focus on the hustle that goes on before the party. I felt that most people don’t realize how much work goes into being a successful DJ; the branding, the promotion, the music research.

So we searched for successful DJs in Tokyo with well rounded portfolios. The first was actually a group of young DJs called CYK who organize and promote their own events. We went to one of their events and then shot an interview with them in the basement of Cutters Studios. My biggest fear was that we would lack b-roll since their event was pretty lackluster but we were able to supplement it with footage from their other events.

The second one was DJ Sarasa and she was amazing. She offered to do the shoot in her house and in her restaurant. Her interview was also amazing and she really embodied the kind of hard work we wanted to showcase.

DJ CATN (Cartoon) was also incredibly gracious. He invited us to his shop where he makes apparel as well as inviting us to follow him at his event. He also prepared a new track for us to document his process.

Finally we interviewed DJ Honda, a legendary hip hop DJ that unfortunately lost a bit of his appeal in recent event. I wasn’t aware of this, but apparently his apparel brand is pretty much known as inaka fashion, or apparel for countryside bumpkins with no taste. I guess it would be the equivalent to people wearing FOX Racing clothes. He was only in Tokyo for a few hours so we could only shoot his interview and no b-roll but luckily he has a pretty big archive of footage that we could use in our film.

This one was edited by Rachael Chen, one of the assistant at Cutters. I think it was really challenging fo her and she really struggled with the structure in the beginning but she eventually pulled through and I’m glad she got something for her reel out of it.

Tattoos

Now, this video is the whole reason I wanted to direct this series in the first place. Those who know me are aware I have a pretty good number of tattoos on my skin and have always been keenly aware and interested in the history and perception of tattoos in Japan. I always felt that Japan had collectively forgotten a huge part of its heritage when it decided that tattoos were suddenly bad and that people just blindly accepted that as their reality even thought it was actually a rather recent development. I wanted to show that tattoos had a rich history and culture in Japan and that it was much more than a Yakuza identifier.

To accomplish this, I wanted to interview people from a wide background, but definitely wanted to cast the legendary Horiyoshi III. I knew he had a deep knowledge of the history of tattoos and also about its evolution, since he had bee such a big part of it for so many years. Then, I wanted to cast an artist who made more modern or pop tattoos. I thought with these two we could contrast two different worlds and show an evolution. Then I wanted to talk to tattooed people and see what perspective they could bring. For this I asked my barber, who is covered in western style ink if he would be willing to participate. He agreed and brought 2 of his coworkers to the shoot. Finally, I wanted a female perspective as I expected women would be faced with a whole slew of issues that I wouldn’t be aware of. For this, we cast a young woman I found on instagram.

The biggest problem I faced was the interviewer. GQ hired a writer who would write an article that would go alongside the film and wanted them to conduct the interview. I thought I had made it very clear what we wanted to get from the interviewees, based on the pre-interviews and. Had prepared a list of questions as guidelines. Sadly, the interviewer was only thinking about his article and completely ignored what we needed for the film. He also created this weird vibe that made our cast really uncomfortable.

After I realized that he was just not going to listen to us, I asked the people at GQ to let us do the interviews from now on and they agreed. Sadly, we were more than halfway through the project by the time I realized that directors can fire people when they don’t work out. Now I know. Also, fuck that guy.

The edit for this one was done by Sachi Sasaki so I was confident we would have a solid edit. In the end, this turned out to be the most successful film ever produced by GQ Japan as it gathered over a million hits in spite of them having less than 50 000 followers when we posted and no promotion budget.

Art

Here, we really had to fight for my definition of street culture with the people at GQ. For them, street art was essentially graffiti but I wanted to push beyond that. So we cast a neon artist named and then we approached a crew called Dirty Workers Studio (DWS) that I had wanted to work with for years. They do marbling art and body decoration and I had originally written a script for a music video with them in mind.

We also wanted to include a graffiti artist but that turned out to be particularly tricky, considering that most of them work in anonymity, given that graffiti is super illegal in Japan. We eventually cast a guy name MJK who actually knew a shop owner who agreed to let him paint on his store shutter.

By this point in the project, we were pretty well rehearsed and running really smoothly. We were doing the interviews ourselves and were able to plan more complicated shots. Especially with the body painting crew. Instead of just dipping random objects into paint, we built an entire scene for a photo shoot with a model. They basically made a bunch of props and painted the model and we had the photos as a final product of project.

Given that this was the last episode to be released and therefore had more time to edit, I gave the opportunity to edit it to two interns who had been helping out on the project since the beginning. I encouraged them to work together on it but one of them basically took it for herself and made the other one assist her. When that second intern offered help, she was turned down and accused of not trusting the first one. I tried to guide her a few times but we got very close to the deadline and basically gave her very direct direction and told her we basically had 24 hours to get it done. I also asked Sachi to help give guidance on the edit. She tried to give advice as much as she could and even asked her to send a QT so she could watch it a couple times on her own and come up with solutions. In response, the intern said “I cannot” and ran out. We didn’t see her for nearly a month after that. We had to call the client and ask for a few extra days and then we got to work. Sachi, Rachael and I split the work and edited through the weekend. Eventually, Sachi just kept working even after sending it the client and it turned out to be the best edited film in the entire series. So much for an uneditable project...

One of the fun things about this project is that while we were shooting, I also captured some stills which were in turn published by GQ and I have to admit I’m pretty proud of that.

What went wrong:

Giving too many chances to someone who can’t do a job may seem like the kind thing to do, but having to push the delivery date is really inexcusable. I should have pulled the job much earlier.

What went right:

The people at GQ Japan were ecstatic about this project. It went beyond their expectations and wanted more. Our team became really well rehearsed and it became really easy for us to work together as the project pushed ahead.

What I learned:

Passion works. I really wanted to make this and I convinced GQ to let me direct the films in a way that I believed in. I made a lot of research and put together a team that I trusted. This also meant I could focus on trying to get the most out of them, rather than feeling like I had to supervise or police everything.

GQ had doubts about including Horiyoshi, but we insisted and we got him in the end

Sadly, I also learned that sometimes, you have to switch up the team. When someone is not pulling in the same direction or contradicting your vision, or is just not good enough, the best thing to do for the project is to let them go.

Ultimately, I’m actually very proud of this project. I learned a lot and it helped me develop a bit of a style. It also led to a lot of new work enquiries for both myself and Matt.